Affective governmentality and the emotional life of journalism across biographical transitions

This article examines the emotional dynamics underpinning journalists’ professional transitions, positioning affect as central to the modality of governance in the media. We address a gap in understanding how journalists experience and manage work-related emotional dynamics throughout their professional trajectories. Drawing on the concepts of affective governmentality and manufacturing consent, we conceptualize affect as socially and institutionally regulated, embedded in governance structures that organize the media field and its work processes. Based on fifteen narrative-biographical interviews with journalists in Slovenia we show that professional trajectories are shaped not only by structural and economic pressures but also by affective attachments that regulate journalism. Emotional investments such as passion, resilience, and civic responsibility enable journalists to endure precarity and restructuring, yet they also normalize exploitation by converting enthusiasm into obligation and reframing burnout as professional commitment. At the same time, moments of resistance, refusal, and exit reveal the limits of affective governmentality, showing how emotional investments can both sustain and destabilize journalistic careers. This study contributes to media research by foregrounding how journalistic work is governed through affect.